Research from the University of Copenhagen shows a link between use of common non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and hospitalization for heart failure in patients with type 2 diabetes. In a presentation at the 2022 European Society of Cardiology conference in Barcelona, the Danish team revealed that patients who took ibuprofen…

As the crushing burden of opioid addiction grows, companies such as Latigo Biotherapeutics and Vertex Pharmaceuticals are working to develop new, safer, and more effective non-opioid painkillers. It’s a huge unmet need and an opportunity. Non-addictive pain drugs represent a growing market that is expected to be worth over $30B…

For this issue of Inside Precision Medicine focused on gender medicine, I was asked to write a piece about overlooked diseases that affect women. This list is long and includes, among others, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, and several autoimmune disorders like lupus and…

Researchers from the Center for Clinical Pharmacology at Washington University School of Medicine say they have identified a new target for addiction-free pain treatment—alternate binding sites on the kappa opioid receptor. According to the WashU investigators, scientists who are developing drugs that only target the kappa receptor to alleviate pain,…

Researchers in Brazil looking for novel painkillers have discovered instead a potential pain insensitivity mutation that codes for a protein known to mitigate the sensory response to heat and the burning sensation caused by chili peppers. The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigations, discovered that an avian variants…

A recent study of medical cannabis use found that for most oncology patients, pain measures improved significantly, other cancer-related symptoms also decreased, the consumption of painkillers was reduced, and the side effects were minimal. Published in Frontiers in Pain Research, these findings suggest that medicinal cannabis can be an alternative to…

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center, and colleagues at the University of California (UC), Irvine, have now trawled through a “junkyard of cancer drugs” to identify a compound, kenpaullone (KP), that might be repurposed as a powerful pain medication. Studies indicated that kenpaullone acts by boosting levels of an ion…